From art and animals to sports and women, Paul Balles reviews 25 of the best websites covered in WebWatch over the last five years

WebWatch has been our monthly guide to places to visit on the World Wide Web. Each month we've looked at a number of websites in a single category of interests. This month's article veers from that usual pattern to an update of the best websites in 25 of the categories covered. 

A few people have said that they follow the column regularly. Like librarians, these regulars seem to have an interest in learning about almost anything. Anyone who's read all the WebWatch articles and followed the links has learned a great deal from the Web. I certainly have.

As each issue has dealt with a single category, some readers have only looked closely at the articles about the categories related to their special interests. Since the column started in August 1998, it's involved 55 articles on different topics, ranging from art to women.

Many people have only recently begun to realise how valuable this source of information on the Internet can be. Two readers have suggested that I pick the best website in each category and devote an article to those sites. I've chosen the 25 that follow:

1

Art: of all the sites devoted to art and artists, the Web Museum Paris Beinvenue! has the largest number of the world's great artists along with excellent samples of many of their most famous works. The site also features biographical sketches of the artists and descriptions of the artistic periods.

2

Animals: the refdesk Facts Encyclopedia page for "Pets and Animals" offers a virtual encyclopedia of the animal world. Starting off with the A to Z of camels, the page presents an alphabetized list of 132 links to a treasure trove of information about animals.

Banking: people who already bank on line know how it's done. The most useful site for potential online banking customers is one that presents the basics in a way that's easy to read and understand. Bankrate.com has all of the information one needs to open and manage an account on line.

Careers: the Monster global gateway from "Careers, Jobs and the World Wide Web" is an excellent site for job hunters. In addition to informative articles and resources for the career minded, the site lists work opportunities around the world.

Celebrity Singers: Celebrity Link's Musicians and Singers is a site for those who want to keep up with their favorites or find more information about those in the music industry. Currently, the category musicians and singers contains 1,535 celebrities and links to 7,808 sites.

Cloning: with the recent announcement of the cloning of humans by Clonaid, the subject takes on increasing importance. The most comprehensive single source of Internet information on this controversial development is the Cloning Directory.

Cultures: "Getting through Customs" heads a web page by the authors of Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands: How to Do Business in Sixty Countries. In addition to almost 20 interesting and useful articles on the important role cultural differences play in the global marketplace, the website has 50 tests of your cultural IQ with ten questions each. 

E-commerce: the five-part tutorial on e-commerce offered by Webmonkey is probably the best introduction to an area that's seen wildly increased interest among business people lately.

Education: billed as the "entry point to free online course materials from around the world", the University of Texas World Lecture Hall has 83 categories to browse for course materials.

Fashion: Fashion Net, with the most interesting features, archives and the best presentation will keep you in touch with the fascinating and changing fashion world. I can't resist adding the lively flash site FTV with music, clips and video channels.

Film celebrities: view top actresses' and actors' pages, latest movie reviews, with archives, profiles and excellent photo galleries. The site also features box-office records for films as well as for actors and actresses.

Food: you'll find everything your taste buds might desire: eating, drinking, playing with your food and at a site called epicurious including links to pages with recipes, ingredients, basics, seasonal cooking and international eating. 

Futures: the need to look ahead becomes even more pressing as changes affecting our lives and livelihoods take place at increasing speeds. For modern views of tomorrow, presented in 99 different areas, by futurologist and author of The MacMillan Atlas of the Future Ian Pearson.

Health: WebMD is surely the leading health portal on the web. Included among their multiple facilities, WebMD has a health-related news centre and the day's live events. You can even create your own, private, online medical record. 

How things work: Marshall Brain's How Stuff Works gets updated daily with feature articles added to an archive of information about how all sorts of things work, from SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence), IP (Internet protocol) telephony, pinball machines, wiretapping, lethal Injection and lock picking, cell phones, car engines, tattoos, dieting to cable modems and DSL Whatever your interests, there's bound to be an article about something that you'd like to know more about.

Investing: Investor Home refers to itself as "The Home Page for Investors on the Internet" and it lives up to that description by links to 60 different investors' sites including newspapers like the Wall Street Journal. William F. Sharpe (Stanford professor and Nobel Prize winner) referred to the site as "a treasure trove of information". Eric Tyson (San Francisco Examiner) wrote that it was "the most authoritative guide to the best and most popular Internet investing sites I've seen". 

Kids: the Librarians' Index to the Internet will bring up two very useful pages for kids and parents if you go to the site and then type into the search engine "Children's Web sites", followed by "Internet and Children".

News: Google News presents information culled from approximately 4,000 news sources worldwide and automatically arranged to present the most relevant news first. Topics are updated continuously throughout the day. If you're interested in a news alternative to the major services, visit the Common Dreams News Center.

Reference: the most incredible reference site on the web is the Reference Desk. There's nothing quite like it anywhere, other than perhaps the Library of Congress, as a veritable source of reference materials. 

Science: perhaps the best way to locate almost anything in the fields of science is to begin with a general directory, like Yahoo's, and work your way down to the specifics you're interested in exploring.

Search engines: by far the best search engine at the time of writing this is Google's. Not only have they indexed more than 3 billion web pages, their home page features access to images, groups, a directory and news sites. Following Google are the Fast search engine and Yahoo!

Self-improvement: a site called Self Growth bills itself as "the recognized leader for self- improvement on the Internet", with 3,000 unique articles on the subject by 500 experts. They also have links to over 4,000 related websites arranged in a topical directory. The site has topics related to self-improvement generally and to improving relationships. It also features health-related subjects like fitness, diet and nutrition, natural medicine and mental health.

Shopping: ConsumerSearch, named "the best expert product-review site on the Internet" by PC World, has a large directory of products on its home page. You choose a category to start with, then find the best reviews, analyze their picks and identify the best product. 

Sports: if thorough sports coverage is what you're looking for, visit SportServer. They also feature a chat channel where fans can discuss games, scores, players and standings. In the soccer news link, SportServer comes up with links to all the daily stories one day after the event. If you want to find a news item from previous day's stories, you can scroll down the list for the story. 

Women: a laudable site devoted to women of achievement can be found at Equity Online. Biographies, awards and additional links have been included on separate pages for such dignitaries as Mother Theresa, Indira Ghandi, Queen Elizabeth, Simone de Beauvoir and Martha Graham.